ALBERTO TROCCOLI

Professor Alberto Troccoli is based at the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences and is also the Managing Director of the World Energy & Meteorology Council. He has about 25 years of experience in several aspects of meteorology and climate and, in the last decade, their applications, particularly to the energy sector. He has worked at several leading institutions such as NASA, ECMWF (UK), the University of Reading (UK) and CSIRO (Australia). He has led a number of projects and capacity building activities, particularly in the area of meteorology and energy. He is currently the leader of the EU H2020 project The Added Value of Seasonal Climate Forecasting for Integrated Risk Management (SECLI-FIRM) project, and of the C3S Energy activity. He served as a leader of the Australian Solar Energy Forecasting System project in collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Bureau of Meteorology and two Australian Universities, which has produced an operational system run by AEMO. Alberto is the chief editor and an author of four books: Seasonal Climate: Forecasting and Managing Risk (2008), Management of Weather and Climate Risk in the Energy Industry (2009), Weather Matters for Energy (2014), Weather & Climate Services for the Energy Industry (2018). He is the main author of the UN-led Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Energy Sector implementation plan. He attended the May 2015 WMO Congress as an invited expert on energy sector matters and he is regularly invited internationally to give talks on energy and climate. He is the convener of the International Conference Energy & Meteorology (ICEM) series. Alberto holds a PhD in physical oceanography from the University of Edinburgh (UK).

The electric energy sector is undergoing a major transformation. The established model, of traditional thermal power plants providing most of the ‘firm’ power to match variable levels of demand, is being challenged by the steadily increasing share of power supply from temporally-variable renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power (e.g. REN21 2018 [1]). Demand variability is also increasing as a result of the widespread use of embedded smallscale generation (e.g., rooftop solar PV) and air conditioning, and can further change in response to price signals. This transformation in the energy sector is taking place against a variable and changing climate. Given the weather- and climate-dependency of both renewable energy and demand it is important to develop robust climate-based tools that can assist energy planners, market operators and policymakers.

'The established model is being challenged by the steadily increasing share of power supply from temporally variable renewable energy sources'

Source: ©imaginima - istockphoto.com

In order to assist the energy sector in understanding the role of climate on energy systems, and uptaking this climate information, the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) [2] has taken as one of its foci the development of climate services for the energy industry, such as through the European Climatic Energy Mixes (ECEM) project. The C3S ECEM’s aim has been to produce a proof-of-concept climate service, or Demonstrator, to enable the energy industry and policymakers to assess how well different energy supply mixes in Europe could meet demand, over different time horizons (from seasonal to long-term decadal planning), focusing on the role climate has on the mixes. This objective has been tackled through a close interaction with stakeholders, in a framework that allows for co-design of the service.

The C3S ECEM project [3] started in November 2015, and represents a collaboration between teams from the University of East Anglia (UEA, UK), Electricité De France (EDF, France), the Met Office (UK), MINES ParisTech/Armines (France), the University of Reading (UK) and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA, Italy). The project had a duration of 29 months.

The specific underlying challenges motivating C3S ECEM are:

• To describe the ways in which energy supply and demand over Europe are affected by the spatial and temporal variations of their climate drivers
• To produce scenarios that demonstrate how different energy supply mixes can meet demand at the European scale, particularly given the projected high level of highly climate-sensitive renewable energies.

The C3S ECEM had a strong programme of stakeholder engagement activities. Input collected via workshops, one-to-one meetings with experts, advisory committee interaction, email surveys, webinars and interactions at key conferences and seminars has been key in developing the Demonstrator [4]. This is the tool that collects the output produced by C3S ECEM and presents it in a user-friendly and interactive format, and it therefore constitutes the essence of the C3S ECEM proof-of-concept climate service. For instance, the approach taken in each workshop has considered the expected audience and, especially, the level of progress of the project, starting from a simple wireframe of the Demonstrator presented during the first workshop.

To provide the key ingredients to the Demonstrator, the C3S ECEM project produced reference data sets for climate variables based on the ERA-Interim reanalysis. Subsequently, energy variables were created by transforming the bias-adjusted climate variables using a combination of statistical and physically-based models. These energy variables include: electricity demand, and generation from wind power, solar power and hydropower. A comprehensive set of measured energy supply and demand data was also collected from various sources including ENTSO-E [5], e-Highway 2050 [6], EUROSTAT [7], World Bank, national Transmission System Operators (TSOs) data not contained in the ENTSO-e dataset [8], the WindPower database [9] and data from EMHIRES [10] and other projects. These data have been critical in providing a reference to assess the robustness of the model used to convert climate into lectric energy variables. The main elements of C3S ECEM are shown in Figure 1 [11].

Climate and energy data have been produced both for the historical period (1979-2016) and for future projections (from 1981 to 2100, to also include a past reference period, but focusing on the 30-year period 2035-2065). The skill of current seasonal forecast systems for climate and energy variables has also been assessed. Data are provided for the European domain, in a multi-variable, multi-timescale view of the climate and energy systems. It can therefore help in anticipating important climate-driven changes in the energy sector, through either long-term planning or medium-term operational activities. For instance, it can be used to investigate the role of temperature on electricity demand across Europe, as well as its interaction with the variability of renewable energies generation. Figure 2 shows an example of how solar power scenarios for the next decades are represented within the C3S ECEM Demonstrator [12].

The C3S ECEM Demonstrator is constituted of a visual tool to display and investigate climate and energy data, along with a comprehensive set of documentation such as fact-sheets, methods and assumptions, key messages, event case studies [13] and frequently asked questions. It also has the option to enter feedback for the developers of the

Demonstrator to take on board. However, response to users’ queries, data updates or fixes are not acted upon within set time frames. In this sense, this is a proof-of-concept climate service, rather than a fullyfledged (operational and/or commercial) climate service. The C3S ECEM Demonstrator is viewed as a building block for the C3S operational service for the energy sector which is currently being developed.

Article based on: https://www.adv-sci-res.net/15/191/2018/